Booth was not mad, and his views were pretty common when he assassinated President Abraham Lincoln in 1865, Jendresen said Friday. “This is a man who believed what still probably 20 percent of this country still believes.”

“Killing Lincoln,” a two-hour special, is an adaptation of a book by Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly.

“If you look at the politics of the time, and the epithets that were being hurled at Lincoln, there is a feeling in the nation that is not dissimilar to the past four years of Barack Obama’s presidency — the idea today of this imperial presidency . . . [of] somebody who is essentially going to declare himself king and take over,” Jendresen said.